Google’s Expanded Text Ads: Everything You Need To Know

Expanded Text Ads is one of the biggest updates to Google Adwords. With almost 2x character limits, you can easily create more attractive ads, drive more clicks to your website and grow your business faster. Here’s everything you need to know about Google’s Expanded Text Ads.

1. What are Expanded Text Ads?

Expanded Text Ads are basically the latest update to Google Text Ads that enable you to create almost 2 times bigger Text Ads on mobile & desktop devices. The most notable thing about them is that Expanded Text Ads character limits are much bigger than those for the current Standard Ads. Expanded text ads allow to display a bigger headline as well as a longer ad description, which enables you to improve Google Ad Campaign performance. Although, Expanded text ads are primarily targeted at mobile search results, they’re also available for desktop based searches. Google began testing Expanded Text Ads in Q2 2016. Expanded text ads will be available on desktop, mobile and tablet devices and automatically wrap according to the device size. Check out the Official Expanded Text Ads Specs by Google.

2. Why is Google introducing Expanded Text Ads?

Since more than 50% of google searches are done using mobile, Google has embarked up on a mobile-first strategy. This means providing a unified search experience across all devices. Consequently, it has pulled the plug on right-sidebar Ads for desktops, in February this year. Expanded text Ads are the next step for Google Adwords in this direction. In fact, according to Google, Expanded text ads is the biggest change to Google Adwords, since it was launched more than 15 years ago.

3. How big are Expanded Text Ads?

Expanded Text Ads are twice as big as your current Google Adwords Text Ads! Currently, you have to content yourself with the 25-35-35 limit (25 character limit for headline, 35 character limit for each of 2 ad description lines). However, Expanded text ads character limits are way bigger, you can add up to two 30 character headlines, and an 80 character description.

That’s a huge opportunity to grab user attention and drive more clicks to your website.

5. Are the Headlines getting bigger?

Currently, our Adwords Text Ad headlines are limited to 25 characters. With Expanded Text Ads, Advertisers can will be able to show two 30 character headlines their Google Ads. That’s a 140% increase in the character limit of text ad headlines.

6. Are the Ad Descriptions getting bigger?

Absolutely! So far advertisers were able to show only two 35 line Ad descriptions in their Google Text Ads. With Expanded Ads, they’ll be able to display an 80 character ad description. That’s a 14% increase in ad description character limit.

7. How will the Display URLs change?

Till now you had to manually enter the display URL, and any mismatch between your landing page and display URL would cause your Ad to be disapproved. However, with Expanded Text Ads, Google will automatically extract the domain of your display URL, based on your landing page address. Advertisers can add up to 2 paths to their display URLs, each up to 15 characters in length.

8. Will Expanded Text Ads improve Click-Through Rates (CTR)?

Definitely! Expanded text ads allow you to display more text, which means more screen space and increased visibility. It allows you to communicate your product benefits, and offers more clearly, write a better Ad Copy and entice users to click your Ads. In fact, Google reports that Expanded text ads are able to increase CTR by up to 20%.

9. How to update your existing Ads to expanded text Ads?

All new Google Ads created since Jan 31, 2017 are Expanded Text Ads, by default. Your old standard Ads will continue to run alongside your new Expanded text ads. However, you can’t modify them. Here are the steps to transition your old standard ads to the new expanded ones.

Hover over the Standard Text Ad you want to edit, and select Copy & Edit from the dropdown next to the pencil icon. This will open the Expanded text ad interface, pre-populated with headline, description and display URLs of your standard Ad.

Enter the Text Ad headline, description, display URL and optional paths (if any) for your new Expanded Text Ad. As you enter these Ad details, Google will create a live Ad preview for both mobile as well as desktop versions.

Hover over the text ad you want to migrate and click the pencil icon to edit it. It will open the Expanded Text Ad interface, pre-populated with your standard ad’s contents such as headlines, description and display url.

Enter the Ad headline, description, display URL and optional paths (if any) as per your requirement. As you enter these details, Google adwords will create a live Ad preview of your Expanded Text Ad for both mobile as well as desktop versions.

10. How to prepare for Expanded Text Ads?

The first step is to improve Google Adwords Quality Score. It’s the most important Adwords metric to improve the position of your Google Ads. With the new Expanded Text Ad format, businesses that occupy the top Ad position will take up a huge amount of screen real estate, especially on mobile devices. In fact, any Google Ad below position 2-3 on mobile devices, will most likely be irrelevant.

Also, you need to optimize and even rewrite your Ad copy to take advantage of the new Expanded text ad format. After all, Google is giving you twice the space with Expanded Text Ads!

Conclusion

Expanded Text Ads is a great way to create eye-catching and descriptive Google Ads to attract more visitors to your website. If used properly, it can boost your PPC Advertising performance. However, the key is to improve your Google Adwords Quality Score, to be able to get the top spot with your new expanded ads. Even though Google is offering 2x Ad Space, be careful not to simply create verbose Ad copies. Otherwise, it will lower your Ad quality and ad position, as well as increase your Cost-Per-Click.

About Sreeram Sreenivasan

Sreeram Sreenivasan has worked with various Fortune 500 Companies in areas of Business Growth, Sales & Marketing Strategy. He’s the Founder of Ubiq BI, a cloud-based BI Platform for SMBs & Enterprises.